Chapter One
Emmett
“Emmet Bailey just tapped! Oh my god, Bailey just tapped out!” Marshawn Anderson yells through my TV speakers.
Pressing rewind, I watch the same fifteen seconds over again.
There, live and in living color, I watch as Jamey Silva tweaks my arm past the point of no return. My shoulder makes a pop that’s heard over the screaming fans. I didn’t plan on tapping out while he was trying to rip my arm from my body, but the moment I felt all the ligaments tear and the shoulder pop out of socket, I tapped.
I press rewind on the DVR and watch it again.
“Emmet Bailey just tapped! Oh my god, Bailey just tapped out!”
“I can’t believe it either, Marshawn. I just can’t—” Jack Harper starts to say before Marshawn cuts him off.
“Wait… That doesn’t look good, Jack. Bailey isn’t getting up.”
I watch as my trainer and best friend Tommy Babson rushes into the cage. Jamey Silva is still doing his victory lap. He does his signature backflip and just about knocks over the doctor who rushed in behind Tommy with his antics.
There’s a serious medical emergency in the ring and that douchebag couldn’t fucking care less.
I leave the recording playing as the commentators of the match start trying to ease the viewers into the unfolding drama that became my life.
Right there on the mat, I’m aching, trying to sit up. My left arm is dangling uselessly at my side. My face, bloody and sweaty, shows the immense pain I’m going through. I know I should be all manly, ignore the pain and shit, but right then I thought I was about to fucking die.
I’ve suffered losses before, after all an eighteen-to-three record isn’t bad by any means, but I’d never been through anything that came close to the hell I was experiencing at that moment. It was both physical and mental.
When I walked into the arena that night, it never even occurred to me that I would be leaving in an ambulance to the hospital, no longer the Welterweight Champion.
I know of loss and pain, I’ve dealt with it my entire life, but watching as Tommy helps me up, I’ve never felt so weak before. Ever. So weak and fucking useless.
Setting the remote down on the couch beside me, I lean over to my end table and grab the sweaty bottle of beer off the coaster. Taking a long swig, I continue to watch the TV.
It’s the look on my face that tells the world it’s all over. That I’ve officially been beaten. I’ve lost my belt, lost my sense of self-worth, and lost my job.
It’s all fucking over.
Jamey Silva starts dancing around as the ref comes over to stand between us. Then the ref lifts Jamey’s hand while mine stays down.
Tommy stands by my injured side, holding me up. Every single fond childhood memory I have has him there in the background, always the fucking cheerleader to my jock lifestyle.
Tears well up on the brim of my eyelids. Yeah, always there for me. He and his parents always there for me when I would catch a beating from my dad. The Babsons took me in when my mom died and kept me fed when my dad was out on another crack-filled bender.
Kept me clothed when my shoes fell off my feet.
In the background, past the cage, I can see both Helen and Bill Babson standing together. Bill has his arm around Helen’s shoulders as they anxiously wait for me to exit the cage.
It’s fucking crazy watching this video again for the eighth time tonight, but I do. Why shouldn’t I watch the beginning of my end?
It’s been exactly six months to the day.
After taking a long pull from the bottle, I reach over and set it back down on the table. It clicks against the other empty ones I have stacked there. I’ll have to switch to the harder stuff tonight if I want to keep the pain away. I’m not entirely sure when I started running out of all my stocked-up beer, though. Probably last night.
These last couple of months have been kind of fuzzy lately.
Grabbing my phone from the couch cushion next to me, I pull up the screen. I peer at it blearily as I scroll down my messages and pull up the last message from Tommy.
Pushing play, I put it up to my ear.
“Come on, asshole. Pick up the damn phone! That’s why man invented cellphones, so we can get ahold of each other whenever we need to.”
Yeah, I don’t like answering my phone much. Too many people calling to talk to me about shit I can’t deal with.
“Fine,” Tommy goes on. “I’ll say it here and when I get to your house. You need to get off the fucking couch and get into the gym. You got beat, who gives a shit? Shrug this shit off and let’s get back to the basics. You remember them, don’t you? Before you became a big pussy.”
Stupid asshole Tommy always uses the humiliation factor to get me wound up.
I watch the screen as he helps me cradle my injured arm. Damn thing was junk, I could barely move it.
At that moment, I didn’t think I could feel any shittier. Then Jamey came up to me in what I thought was a show of good sportsmanship and goodwill. I thought he wanted to check on me or something.
How wrong I was.
The announcers and crowd didn’t hear what he said, but Tommy and I sure did.
“You got your faggot boyfriend to help your little bitch ass out of the